Now that March is nearing an end, we’re taking a peek at how much precipitation Rockford has received.

Let’s start with snow (since it feels like winter out there)! Rockford normally sees almost 5 inches of snow throughout the month of March. Up until last Monday, we were well below the normal mark. Monday, 5.1 inches of snow fell at the Rockford Airport, bringing our monthly total to 7.6 inches!

Now for the rainfall.
Rockford usually gets 2.32 inches of rain throughout the month. So far, we’ve only gotten about an inch and a quarter of rain. This Sunday, there’s a good chance we’ll add to that rain total bringing us a little bit closer to average before rounding out the month of March.

We’ve been so excited for the temperatures this March, the lack of rain and snow has gone unnoticed.

During the month of March, Rockford usually sees 2.3″ of rain. So far, we’ve seen less than half an inch! On average, we usually see almost 5″ of snow. Cut that in half- that’s as much as we’ve seen so far this month.

However, we could add to that as we head into the start of next week. We’ve got a chance to see some snow heading into Monday, which would bring us a little closer to that average mark.

Not only have we had very little snow and rain this month, but the precipitation that we’ve gotten, all fell in one day (March 3rd)!

February 19, 2015: The Stateline is no stranger to wicked cold winter temperatures, and dangerously cold morning wind chills. We’re used to layering up, warming our cars, and heading out into the bitter cold. This morning was another day to add to the list of uncomfortably cold mornings with hazardous wind chills. But could this one be one for the record books?

Turns out, it might be TWO for the record books.

Potential record number 1:
If Rockford’s high temperature stays in the single digits today, a 79 year old record will be broken. February 15-18, 1936 holds the record for Rockford’s latest consecutive days of single digit temperatures. Yesterday, Rockford hit a high temperature of 8°. If we combine yesterday with today’s forecast of single digit high temperatures, we’ve got ourselves a record of the latest occurrence of 2 or more consecutive single digit high temperatures.

Potential record number 2:

If Rockford’s high temperature only climbs to 6° or less, a 56 year record will be broken. On February 19th, 1959 Rockford only reached a high temperature of 7°, which is still the coldest for this date on ever recorded.

All eyes have been on a system approaching this weekend that’s set to bring us measurable snowfall.

The timing of this system seems to be pretty consistent among forecasting models. Snow should start moving into the Stateline on Saturday evening, and continue to give us snow throughout Sunday morning, afternoon, and even through the evening. However, by the time we head into Sunday evening, we’re talkin’ light snow. Which leads me to the next point- when are we talking the heaviest snow? Starting at 12AM Sunday (midnight Saturday) and lasting through lunch on Sunday is when we’ll see the heaviest snowfall across the Stateline.

We won’t be seeing the heaviest snowfall out of the system. The bulk of the precipitation stays to our south, keeping us out of the “bullseye.” But don’t put the shovels away just yet! I’m anticipating 2-4″ of snow to fall across the Stateline, with places along I-88 to fall on the higher end of that spectrum. We cool down to the single digits overnight on Sunday, making way for icy conditions on your Monday commute.

Stick with us throughout this evening and through the weekend as we continue to track this system!

Now that we’ve officially entered the first week of Fall, we’ve all got sweaters, boots, apple cider donuts and football on our minds, right?

Wrong.

You may want to replace those boots with sandals and the apple cider with lemonade. Feel free to keep the football thoughts though Our first week of fall is actually taking steps toward more summer-like weather. Did you enjoy the weather yesterday? Plenty of sunshine, calm winds, upper 60’s. Get used to it!

Wash, Rinse, Repeat. That’s the forecast through the rest of the week. BUT before you throw in the soap….

Turn up the heat.

We’ll see high pressure continue to bring us sunshine this week, as well as calm winds. We could pick up a few clouds toward the end of the week due to a disturbance to our west, however high pressure helps to keep rain chances away. In addition to the sunny sky and light wind, we’ll see temperatures climb.
Today, temperatures top out in the low 70’s. By the end of the week, we’ll be looking at temperatures in the mid to upper 70’s.

Mother Nature is giving us a pleasant surprise! Tuesday and Wednesday will bring us our first taste of summer weather! Temperatures will touch 80 degrees tomorrow and only fall to the 60s throughout tomorrow evening. We will cool off a few degrees on Wednesday, but it will still be t-shirt and shorts weather with temperatures at 76 degrees.

Unfortunately, what goes up must come down, and our summer tease will quickly turn back to spring starting Thursday. Like an old fashion scale, temperatures are going to crash down into the upper 50s on Thursday and Friday, and drop off a couple more degrees for the rest of the weekend.

Clouds will thicken up overnight as a cold front to our west moves toward the greater Rockford area.

There is a line of showers and thunder associated with this cool front, luckily most of the precipitation will push north and fizzle out as it gets into our area on Monday. FutureTrack is showing only a sprinkle of rain at 0.03″ by tomorrow morning. Dry air moves in toward the late morning, but showers will pick back up around midnight. The bulk of tomorrow will bring you a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures topping out near 67 degrees. We could see around half an inch of accumulated precipitation in Rockford late Monday night through Tuesday evening, with the rest of the viewing area hovering between 0.41″-0.58″.

Now that March is finally behind us, let’s take a peek at a few April statistics.

The average high temperature for April 1st is 55 degrees with a low of 33 degrees. It sure feels like April was playing a nasty joke on us for April Fools Day today, we were a little over 15 degrees cooler than normal today. Good news is temperatures are trending upward for the rest of the work week and into the weekend. The average high for the last day of the month is 67 degrees with a low of 43 degrees, so there is something to look forward to!

The GFS model forecasts out 16 days and is currently showing the middle of April to have near normal temperatures. Average mid-April temperatures are right around 60 degrees. Now, this forecast is still quite a ways out BUT there is a light at the end of the tunnel! A record high temperature of 93 degrees was set back in 1930 and a record low of 5 degrees set in 1982, however the climate outlook isn’t putting any extremes in our forecast this month. The Climate Prediction Center is showing an average temperature and precipitation trend for the month of April. The GFS 16 day outlook is giving Rockford a potentially wetter than average first half of the month. On the bright side, more April showers brings more May flowers, right? The average precipitation for April is 3.35 inches of rain and 0.9 inches of snow.

A few facts and a small glance at the GFS long range forecast for April. Let’s hope this month is closer to average than the last!

If you can believe it, the normal high temperature for Rockford in March is 46.9 degrees. Sadly, March of 2013 brought us an average high almost 10 degrees cooler at 37 degrees. Our average low temperature followed the same trend, being 5.4 degrees cooler than normal. We actually only had 4 days with average temperatures above 40 degrees! What’s even more interesting is that Rockford averages 4 or 5 days of 60+ degrees in March, but this year we had ZERO! As a matter of fact, almost one third of our high temperatures and 94% of our low temperatures were below freezing! Here are two facts we can put some blame on for those cool temperatures: 1) 15 out of 31 days had an average wind flow out of the northwest. 2) 16 out of 31 days averaged cloudy skies.

Now, let’s talk about snow. Finally, a category we were above average in! On March 5th, 2013, Rockford received 9.6 inches of snowfall, crushing the previous record of 5.4 inches back in 1959. Actually, the average snowfall for March in Rockford is 4.8 inches- we almost tripled that! This March, we received 13.9 inches of snowfall. Not to mention, Rockford recorded precipitation for 21 out of 31 days!

Now we can finally say goodbye to cold, snowy March as we spring into April.

According to the United States Drought Monitor, Northern Illinois is still abnormally dry and the rest of Illinois is currently not under drought conditions.

Just three months ago, 78% of Illinois was abnormally dry, while 40% was under moderate drought conditions, and 9% (including us) under severe! We can thank those “spring” snow storms, along with the January and February rain and snow showers for pulling all but 16% of Illinois out of dry conditions.

We’ve actually had an excess of precipitation since the start of the year, compared to our normal of 4.82 inches for January, February, and March here in Rockford. January brought us 3.09 inches, slightly less from February at 2.98 inches, and just over 2 and a quarter inches so far this month. These precipitation amounts total to 8.36 inches and nearly double our precipitation totals for the same three months in 2012 (4.63 inches).

There is a little bit of rain and rain/snow mix in the forecast for the weekend, so don’t forget to check the updated U.S. Drought Monitor on Thursday. In the meantime, Northern Illinois will slowly chip away those abnormally dry conditions.